Thursday, January 9, 2014

2013 Recap

December 1st, 2013 marked the third anniversary
of this blog (well, technically it was November 17th, but I don’t count that
first “test” post). I’ve liked writing the blog, and I’m grateful to all of you
who have indicated that you’ve liked reading it. 2013 turned out to be a
terrific year of reading, if perhaps not as good a year for writing. I managed
only 19 posts, though if I subtract the time I spent away this year on various
travels, my low production rate seems not significantly different from the two previous
years. I can tell myself that, anyway.

Few themes appear to tie this year’s crop together; as
usual, my reading has been unfocused and promiscuous. If I had to come up
with an element to provide some cohesion, I might refer to this as my
wandering-in-the-desert year, since I count ten books set in the desert (or
maybe 11, if Lao She’s weird Chinese science fiction novel Cat Country, with its dusty gray and desolate cat people planet, can count).

João Guimarães
Rosaand his fictions in and around the grand Brazilian sertão rank as this year’s biggest
project; I read everything by him I could find in English as well as all but
two works I could find in French that didn’t overlap the English ones. He may
well be untranslatable, but I still found the challenges of gaining at least a tilted glimpse into this talented writer’s work to be worthwhile and
fascinating, and I am deeply obliged to the other participants in this year’s
group read of Guimarães Rosa’s Grande Sertão: Veredas (The Devil to Pay in the Backlands):
Miguel, Richard, and Rise (links to their posts are listed at the bottom of the pagehere).

Casting a profound shadow over the rest of the year was
Vassily Grossman’s monumental Life and Fate. Only a novel this masterful
and important could live up to a title like that, but its breadth and deeply
intimate account of the Second World War, from a Russian writer uncannily present at
many of the war’s most significant events, make it one of giant novels of the
20th century, one that feels utterly indispensible. I have not written about it – yet. But please check out outstanding posts by other bloggers, again conveniently linked at Caravana de Recuerdos.

If one other novel from this year might challenge Grossman’s pre-eminent place, it is surely Alessandro Manzoni’sThe Betrothed. Books like The Betrothed (are there any books like The Betrothed?) are why one reads
literature, and I’ll consider myself immensely lucky if I find another novel as rewarding as this one in the coming year.

Another highlight of the year was Raymond Roussel, whoseImpressions of Africahad been on my to-be-read list for two decades. I was baffled,
bemused, and bewildered – and ultimately enthralled - to read this strange,
captivating, premonitory work.

Other authors new to me from whose work I emerged with great
enthusiasm included Leonora Carrington,Paul Scheerbart, Barbara Pym (a huge thanks
toLevi Stahlfor steering me her way), Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Lewis, andJacques Yonnet. Among my favorite new
discoveries is early 20th century British writer William
Gerhardie. The two of his books I read
this year, Futility and The Polyglots, rise easily into the
cream, with their acutely literary, Chekhovian family sagas set in the odd
corner of history occupied by the Allied intervention in Siberia and East Asia in
the early years of the Russian Revolution. Gerhardie proves a rare writer
capable of both scathing and gentle wit, enormous charm, sentences one wants to eat with a
spoon, an adept diplomat’s perspective on politics and history, and a
humanist’s moving views on war, love, and nutty families.

Speaking of the Far East, a journey through southern China in
October prompted a re-entry into some Chinese literature. I gained a new
appreciation for Nobel prize winner Gao Xinjiang’s Soul Mountain, which
I’d read when it first appeared in English and not liked very much, but which
now, thanks to my marginally improved understanding of China and its minority
regions, seemed a far more intriguing work. I also had occasion to revisit Mo
Yan’s darkly comic Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh, and to discover
that Lao She, perhaps most famous as the author of Rickshaw Boy, had also written a surprising dystopian novel, Cat
Country, capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with Animal Farm
or Brave New World, but with a particularly Chinese angle. I plan to
read more Chinese literature this year and hope that some other bloggers may
want to join in.

I succeeded in revisiting some writers I was determined to revisit:
19th century Portuguese master novelist José Maria Eça de Queiroz; the razor-sharpCaroline Blackwood; Swiss modernist Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz (whose novel Beauty on
Earth has recently been translated by Michele Bailat-Jones, so you should
all run out and get a copy to support her efforts to get more of this marvelous
writer’s work into English); the inimitably quirky Jane Bowles; volume two of
Karl Knausgaard’s epic My Struggle;another delightful César Aira novella; a new
Javier Marías; Shirley Jackson’s creepy-funny The Haunting of Hill House;
and another reading of Nicolai Gogol’s Dead Souls. I also returned to Jules Verne for the first time since childhood, and that’s about all I will say
about that for now.

The year was also filled with a few more guilty pleasures: George
Simenon’s alcohol-fueled "American" novel, Feux Rouges (a nod to Joel Dicker’s La Verité sur l’affaire Harry
Quebert primarily for its sending me back to Simenon); Hugh Edward’s off-center, completely absorbing fireside tale, All Night at Mr. Stanyhurst’s, about which one might
build a small, secretive cult; and above all, “folk artist” writerAmanda McKittrick Ros, whose work provoked much laughter and a grateful appreciation
for the dumbfounding poetry of her wonderfully illogical sentences. I’ve been
gradually making my way through her second novel, Delina Delaney, for at
least six months now, and though it’s only 350 pages long, about a paragraph at
a time is all I can seem to manage.

Scattered about the rest of the year were other diverse
literary adventures, including a very few relative duds. However, each of those
featured something worthwhile, and my
only regret about my reading this year is that I didn’t read more.

Finally, I should mention the widely-reviewed final volume
recounting the voyage the late Patrick Leigh Fermor took when he set out from
England as a 17-year-old in 1933 and walked across Europe to Constantinople. The
Broken Road, published last year nearly 80 years after the travels it relates,
traces the final leg of Fermor’s journey, from the Iron Gates of the Danube to
Constantinople, also containing his account of a subsequent sojourn among the
monasteries of Greece’s Mount Athos. Though the book was left unfinished at
Fermor’s death, his biographer Artemis Cooper and writer Colin Thubron helped
to finish it, and it fulfills its promise as the culmination of one of the
great travel accounts in English. Less commented upon in the many reviews of
the book, The Broken Road also conveys, movingly and with great courage
and grace, the writer’s forbearance with the inevitabilities associated with
aging and memory.

As for the year ahead, I doubt that I’m finished wandering
through the desert. But whatever the year brings, I’m certain its literary
offerings will continue to provide a multitude of fertile oases. Thank you for
reading.

16 comments:

I always say that it is quality not quantity when it comes to posts. 19 entries is impressive when they are entries of substance that were fit in among a busy life.

I very much enjoy reading the posts here. You really bring a fresh perspective to reading, Case in point - your series of essays on dessert related books was really out of the box. I look forward to reading about what you have to say in 2014.

Life and Fate is enticing, and now I'm curious to read The Betrothed. I remember reading, many years ago, a Disney version of it with Mickey Mouse as the protagonist. It has stayed with me all those years.

Miguel, the whole post - no, the entire year - was worth it just to learn of the Disney Classics books (maybe my linking The Betrothed to How the Grinch Stole Christmas wasn't so gauche after all). There are dozens of these Disney versions! The Odyssey. "Duck Quixote." The Three Musketeers. Edgar Allen Poe's stories. Tom Sawyer. Treasure Island. "Uncle Scrooge Journeys to the Centre of the Earth." The Importance of Being Earnest. Hamlet. Othello.Othello?? I think I may at last have found a literature challenge to propose.

Tom, Brian - many thanks. I suspected there might not be another book like The Betrothed. What a high bar that one has set - it wouldn't be a bad idea to spend the whole year re-reading it. I'm glad you enjoyed the desert series, Brian; I don't think I'm done yet with it.

I discovered so much through Disney; my favourite was their versions of the World's 7 Wonders, with Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and the rest of the ducks playing them out. It was a joyous day when I finished acquiring all seven stories, scattered willy-nilly through several dfifferent volumes.

Belated props to you for what a great reading year you had, Scott, and thanks for the push for me to try and get to the Manzoni this year (it's suddenly one of the longest owned books in my possession if I'm not mistaken). Also, delighted to see that a few books we read together were included in your highlights. I picked up a Knausgaard and a Thesiger thanks in part to your recommendations, so thanks for that (and Bánffy!) as well. Happy reading 2014 to you while I'm at it!

I recently came across and read an unfinished Pym novel: An Academic Question. Not as good, of course, as her other novels, but when you've read them all, and you're in the mood for more Pym, then you might want to read it.